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Decisions for a Web Site – Part 3 – Your Domain

July 3, 2009 at 3:25 am | In Computers, Internet, Online services, Software, Web Apps, Web Design | 2 Comments

The Domain

The final touch for your web site is a friendly name. 220.210.35.22/website52/public-html/ really isn’t very intuitive. A domain name acts like an alias for that. Type in the domain name in a web browser, the name is looked up in your ISP’s DNS servers (domain name server) where it finds the true IP address of the web site. It goes to that address and requests the web page to download to your browser. All in the blink of an eye.

To choose a domain, think of some phrases that will suit, hopefully like the name you use in real world. Something easy to remember and spell.

If your web site is in planning and you find a good name, you can reserve or “park” it for a reduced fee until you’re ready. If you don’t do this, you risk loosing it to someone else. I waited 3 years to get a name someone else had but wasn’t using. And I’ve had a couple of clients loose a name because they waffled. Careful with domains owned by squatters. They’re for sale – but at a price. They reserve domains and put up garbage sites that cross link with each other to get search rankings and ad revenues.

Another thing to consider is what is called “name space”. Similar domain names that point to others, even competitors. You don’t want clients landing on a porn site or competitor if they misspell your domain name slightly. Some will park related domains or slight variations as well.

Say you like the domain “happyredscarfs.com”. Next, you want to check and see if it’s available. You need a domain registrar to do that.

Domain registrars have tools for checking to see if a domain is available. You can use yours or a service like http://www.whois.net/

Having a separate domain registrar means another bill and thing to remember but if you move your host, you just have to update the Registrar. Having the domain and host together means one less bill and maybe a lower rate but if you move, you have to move both. That’s a little bit fussier.

Note that different registrars will have different name selections available. The above for example does not have .ca Canadian domains. http://www.webnames.ca/ does, plus .tel .asia and .mobi You have to have an address in Italy for a .it domain but .tv Tuvalo domains are available. Prices vary by domain type.

Once you buy your domain, your registrar will send you an email with key details you’ll need to renew, unlock and otherwise manage your domain. It’s a good idea to hold on to this email too. I usually take all the web addresses, logins, email accounts, etc and compile them into a text file near the web site files. (for a big site, a spreadheet) This way, it’s easy to find when needed.

Typically domains are paid for in yearly increments, whereas hosting is monthly.

It’s also worth noting there are domain wholesalers. Similar to hosting resellers, the little picture at the bottom of this page gives you an idea of the role.

Domain structure

This leads us into a brief review of the parts of a web address. There is three main parts.
For example: shop.happyredscarfs.com

a) On the far right is the tld or top level domain. There are 2 kinds. 2 letter country codes (like .ca, .uk, .us, .it, etc) and what used to be 3 letter catagory codes like .com and .net. Catagories have a meaning, in this case commercial and network. More recently some further category or generic TLDs have been implemented, with the possibility of privately managed ones. These include things like .info and .biz. Some like .coop, and .aero are reserved for those types of organizations.

There has been a long debate about having a tld like .sex or .xxx to move those sites into a separate arena so they are unlikely to be stumbled upon and are more easily blocked. The porn industry evidently supports it.

They’re now testing domains in non-english scripts. You can browse all tld’s here if you’re interested.
http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/

b) the middle part, ‘happyredscarfs‘ is the domain name itself. With the tld, it points to your site.

c) the first part on the left has traditionally been the server name. Thus multiple servers are supported in a single domain. ftp.happyredscarfs.com and mail.happyredscarfs.com, for example. A web server was typically named www. Nowadays, the www is largely optional. This frees up that place for virtual “sub-domains”. Thus ‘shop.happyredscarfs.com’ can take you directly to the shopping section, perhaps even to another companies shopping servers you use.

When a Domain goes live

Essentially, it takes a bit of time for the search engine spiders to recheck all web servers for changes. How often they check yours depends on how typically it changes, how busy they are, etc etc. There’s a way to submit your site to the search engines, but each is different.

Here’s Googles:
http://www.google.com/addurl/
Expect it to take a couple of days after that.

This is not a small thing as some people will type your domain in the search box rather than the address bar. They’re not clear on the difference. If it doesn’t come up, they don’t know how to get to your site.

I won’t go into search engine optimization. That’s a whole evolving specialty in itself.

I would recommend META tags for your site though. Google uses that info in displaying its search results, for example. Use Meta description, keywords, and robots to encourage indexing. (search the terms for format)

Meta tags are hidden code in the HEAD of a web page designed as the tag suggests for Meta information. Stuff like copyright, author, and language are also set there. Page title, HTML version, and standards compliance are also set in the HEAD with some scripts and styles.

Domain transfer

When you register a domain nowadays, they are often “locked”. This prevents someone unauthorized from ‘lifting’ your domain or taking it and trying to sell it to someone else. If you decide to move your domain to a new registrar or host, you arrange with the new company to transfer it, then the old host to unlock and authorize it. This is a key point where good service is important. If they are slow or reticent, it can mess up your migration schedule. A few offshore ISPs don’t play nice.

Just make sure you have your web site copied over to the new site before the actual transfer happens. Once it’s officially moved, the domain name servers all over the world get updated. This takes place over a number of hours or more. If anyone types in your domain on an ISP that’s updated, if you don’t have the site there, they’ll just get some kind of “under construction” thing.

With the site present on the new host, they’ll never know there’s a change. It’s seamless.

Virtual Domains

One other option is a virtual domain. You own the domain but rather than it being directly associated with the web server address, it is an alias to a web server. While this is not suitable for a commercial site, if you are using the free web space of your Internet provider as mentioned above, it can be a nice solution. Put your web site anywhere, then point the domain to where it is.

Thus, you can change ‘members.isp.com/sites/~yoursite’ into ‘happyredscarfs.com’

Hover.com (the former domaindirect) is $15 a year, more for email accounts. They use some odd terminology, but thats what it is. Considering domain registration can be twice that or more, it’s reasonable if you have free web space.

The domain can also be set so the browser only sees the domain.

At one time, I used them for my personal sites plus dozens for client services until virtual sub-domains became available.

Hope you’ve found this useful
David

< Web Pages
< Web Host

Decisions for a Web Site – Part 2 – The Web Host

July 3, 2009 at 3:16 am | In Blogs, Computers, Hardware, Internet, Online services, Web Design | 3 Comments

The Web Host

The host is the company that serves your web site to the world. Thus, you want it to be reliable, fast and easy to work with.

If you’re geeky enough, you can be your own web host. Set up a web server on an old box in your basement using something like dyndns.com to direct browsers. But this means you do it all, need reliable high speed Internet with decent traffic limits, and have to check your Internet providers user agreement. Some are not happy with servers due to FTP music servers bogging down other customers connections, for example. Most of us don’t mind paying $8 a month for someone else to do this.

Personally, I would not recommend any of the free web hosts. They’re more about serving ads than your web pages and often don’t do a great job of that. Some require you to use their limited design tools so they can place ads more easily.

One exception – some Internet providers include free web space with your Internet service. That doesn’t have ads. You just have to arrange to ‘activate’ it – basically create a folder on their web server. Look at them first to ensure they’re ad free. In this area, 2 of the main ISP’s do it, one points you to someone else’s ad riddled service.

A downside to free ISP web sites is the address. Something like members.isp.com/sites/~yoursite
You can use or migrate to a virtual domain to solve that. More on this later.

Choice

First thing to do is look at what you want to do with the site now and in the next few years. If you don’t know that, it’s time to think about why you’re doing this. With a review, you have a checklist of requirements. Some hosts include a remarkable range in their base offerings, some are cheap with everything else as extras. And watch out for the setup charges.

For example, you want to be able to grow the site and volume, to add a blog, eCommerce, and email addresses. Maybe start an email newsletter (mailing list). Maybe you want to create email aliases to use for special events or mailings so you know where mail is coming from. Or host podcasts or streaming video. Have an FTP server for large files. And you may want to be able to manage your domains in the same place. There are many, many options.

If you’re not sure what to think about, here’s a site that talks about some of them.

Be careful of hosts that don’t clearly and openly detail what the hosting plan includes.

Cpanel is a popular tool for managing your site settings. Some services use their own cludgy system that is hard to work with. What about support? 24/7, live chat, toll free number?

Where are the actual web servers? In an earthquake or flood zone? Overseas? Top commercial hosts will have mirrored servers in more than one area if you need that level of reliability. Are they connected to one of the Trunk lines of the Internet? If they’re on a backwater, you’ll get poor performance. Some retail computer stores have servers in the back room. Not inspiring.

When it comes to price, check for setup fees, monthly rate, and overage rates (drive space and traffic), extras for any of the additions you want, especially backup. If your site gets corrupted or a virus, how will it be restored? I once got huge overage fees when someone hacked their web server and hide a massive French movie file inside our directory. Not hard to sort out.

Once you have a list of features you need and may soon want, you can begin looking for suppliers.

The biggest challenge in choosing a web host is the myriad of choices. This is partly because some of the bigger companies have resellers, marketing them under another banner. Local resellers can give you better service, but it takes you a step away from the provider so make sure that’s there.

Fred Langa suggests you take a 2 pronged approach. Check reviews on-line and check examples like yours.

1) Use a couple of on-line Host selection wizards such as:
http://hostsearch.com/shared_zone.asp
http://findmyhosting.com/searchwizard.asp

Careful – some on-line reviewers have biases for advertisers, etc.
Some have Country based searches if you want it in a certain country. For example the first has a Canadian section.

“You can help ensure you get good results by thinking about not only what you need from a hosting service right now, but also what you might want and need in the future.”

Once you have a short list, Fred suggests then working the question the other way.

2) Find a site similar to what you plan and see who’s hosting them.

You can ask them and see how happy they are. Or ask people you know who do similar things for a recommendation. If that’s not available, you can find out who’s hosting a site of interest with WHOIS tools for domain lookup.
http://Whois.net
Most ISPs that offer domain services also have a WHOIS tool.

Personally, I’d avoid the mom and pop shops and the really big companies as they can be lumbering beasts.

The hosts I’ve recommended have varied over time. Some have stopped hosting, been absorbed or slipped badly. These days I recommend TRK. This was based on a recommendation from Fred Langa after his own extensive research for his site. On-line reviews continue to support that. They’re smaller so give that more personal support. http://www.trkhosting.com/

I’ve also seen Bluehost.com well recommended a number of times.

Careful about cheap services that have their servers overseas. A couple of clients have had nightmares with that, like the ISP trying to make side money and associating their domain with a porn service.

Some people have concerns about the US Patriot Act and thus keep their sites off of US soil. Depends on the kind of data you store. Do you have personal information for international customers, for example?

Don’t worry about making a perfect choice. You can always move your site somewhere else, whenever you want. But it is simpler to get it right the first time.

Posting to the Web Host

When you’ve made that choice and rented that server space, it’s time to take the web files and upload or post them onto the web server. FTP or File Transfer Protocol is normally used. You can use a separate FTP program like the free Filezilla or you may use the the FTP tools built into your design program or web tools your ISP provides. Personally I much prefer managing files directly, so use an FTP program.

You need to know 3 things for any sort of access, including FTP. The address, the login and the password. Typically when you sign up for hosting, they send you 2 emails. One with account and billing info. And one with FTP info, how to access your control panel, and so on. (The control panel is where you’ll set up email accounts, sub-domains and all the other features)

FTP may require knowing the true IP address of your web site, especially if your domain name is not fully registered yet and you want the web site live when it is. Your host may ask you to use your domain name thereafter.

Upload the web pages and sub-folders into the root or public-html folder (or similar), laid out just like they are on your computer, then open a web browser and test it – make sure everything’s working. Your site is now live and the server environment may respond differently with links, etc. Some design programs can goof up and make links relative to your computer. OOps. A good web design program will validate your site before you post though.

Web hosts will often have other special folders already present. Usually, you leave them alone. They are typically for optional features and statistics for your site. (page hits, browsers used, country of origin, etc etc)

Backup

It is a good idea to have a backup copy of your web site files saved on your computer. Just copy them as they are, .HTM, etc. files. Don’t forget the sub-directories with images, etc. Make a folder called web site and put everything in it – just like a paper filing cabinet.

If someone else updates the web site, remember that the copy you now have is the old version. Don’t then update and post that or you’ll erase the previous updates. Download the latest to your computer first, then update from that. Adobe Collaborate is designed to update on the server, simplifying this issue.

If you’re not familiar with Windows Explorer (In Accessories), it’s a good program to get to know. Microsoft has been making it less obvious and pushing you into the My Docs folders, but it’s the default Windows file manager. Handy if you want to get a little more advanced than dumping everything in one place. We all know what it’s like when someone keeps everything on their real desktop…

Digitally copying files over the Internet is pretty reliable. Otherwise you would see lots of web sites messed up. They’re downloading so they can open on your computer. You can add secure FTP (sFTP) if you want, but that’s more for sensitive content.

Next, the Domain…
David

< Web Pages
The Domain >

Decisions for a Web Site – Part 1 – Design

July 3, 2009 at 3:09 am | In Blogs, Computers, Design, Internet, Online services, Software, Technology, Web Apps, Web Design | 3 Comments

Decisions for a Web Site

For anyone making decisions about launching or changing a web site, there are some general things to think about. Firstly, it’s useful to understand that a web site has 3 components, each of which may be handled separately.

1) the web pages – the actual web site and files. You may use a web design program, download a template, and/or get a web designer for this.

2) the web host – the web server who’s space and connection you essentially rent. The Internet is free but we pay to connect to it and to keep stuff on it.

3) the domain – the name of the site. Internet servers have an address like 220.210.35.22. In fact every device connected to the Internet is given an IP address. Your web pages will be hosted in a sub-folder, like 220.210.35.22/website52/ Pretty hard to remember. A domain name translates that address into a friendlier form using “Domain name servers”.

It’s not a bad idea to select and reserve your name before your web site is designed so it can be tied into the site design, logo, and such.

You may not need all this info, but you may find it useful to understand what’s going on.

Before We Go Further

Before you go out and find a web host, etc., it’s worth thinking a little about what you want to do with the site. This can affect your choice of technology. In the last few years, a variety of social networking services have arisen. Many are free.

If your content is news, event or writing oriented, a blog might be a good choice. You can use a free blog like WordPress.com or Blogger.com. With WordPress, you can choose a theme with tabs and place some static pages, thus having a small web site “behind” the blog front end. Like this blog. Blogs have the advantage of faster indexing by the search engines. I migrated both my web sites to blogs about 2 years ago. Way more traffic. If you decide to have your own site with a blog later, you can export your posts from WordPress.com and migrate them.

If you are a musician, you may find MySpace great for posting song samples and getting interest. Again, you can add a linked web site later for purchasing, etc. as required.

For other social networking sites, be careful of the user agreements. Many are designed as ad servers and for collecting demographic information. Some will take ownership of any content you post or spam everyone in your address book with invitations “from you”. I’m not going to go into group, discussion, forum or other related tools.

It’s a rather curious dynamic that you can get a free adless blog that is far more technically advanced than a typical web site, but this just reflects the history of the biz. I’ll resist babbling about that…

The Web Pages

New Design Standards

Web design changed considerably with the adoption of “Web Standards” a few years ago. Browsers all adopted the same standards (more or less) so the browser wars ended. It’s now rare to see a site that asks you to use a specific browser, except Microsoft. What has delayed the implementation has been the design tools. More on this shortly.

Web Standards includes several things, but prominent is the separation of content and design. Essentially, content is placed in HTML tags (paragraph, division, title, link, etc.) and design styles are added through style, class and ID tags. Style is in 3 layers – global, page specific, and content specific. This is called cascading, hence the term “cascading style sheets” or CSS.

CSS is used to define fonts, colour, placement and much more. For example, many menus now are HTML bulleted lists with styles added, turning them into pop out, horizontal, roll-over responsive menus. It has revolutionized web design.

CSS uses a little different syntax than HTML, as all languages do, but is in some ways easier than HTML. As usual, it has a few things to remember, like a required sequence in defining a font or the sequence of the sides of the box model used to define a space. CSS positioning is way ahead of HTML.

Styles are often stored in a separate .CSS file (the style sheet) which is then called by every page in the site inside the HEAD tag, then class and id selectors call details in the content HTML. This way, make one colour change in the style sheet and all pages are updated. Web pages are smaller, code is cleaner and it’s much easier to update and maintain. And it looks better.

If you want to get an idea what CSS is capable of, check out CSS Zen Garden. All that changes is the style sheet, not the web page.

I certainly recommend standards. Use that as a slogan and you won’t find yourself with code that only works sometimes. If they teach “The Way” and it’s proprietary, it’s not standards. Standards are open, cross-platform and interoperable – one code for printers, cell phones, web browsers, and more.

Newbies

If I help someone new get started with a site these days, I usually suggest they search for “free CSS web templates” on-line, find one they like and use that. Update labels, titles and links, insert logo, images and content. Voila. They can then learn the code at their leisure. Building a design template from scratch is a lot more work, usually with some debugging.

One site people have liked for templates.

My preference is templates that use styles and html only, with minimal scripts. They’re faster, lighter, and its much easier to learn. Build 3D interactivity, popup images or details, animation and more with CSS alone.

You can still build a web site the old way, with HTML only. But it often looks like a dog compared to a styled site. Many of the old design tags in HTML like color and font have been “deprecated”, meaning it’s so ’90’s. (laughs) There’s lots of things you can’t do in HTML.

The challenge I’ve found is that the free and low cost design programs mostly suck at modern design. They were built as HTML editors only. Some break the code, some require you do it their way – something that won’t work anywhere else – and the better ones simply don’t display it properly. You have to always check in a browser. If you want to design visually, that’s a problem.

This page reviews free options. If you don’t mind code, HTML-Kit 292 is great. NVu can handle simple sites. If you have the funds and intend to do this regularly, Adobe Dreamweaver is the professional tool. If you’re starting with a template, you may find Adobe Contribute will do the job although it expects a site already on a server. (it’s designed for updating a site) More WYSIWYG editors.

If the software is an “HTML editor” it’s missing half of what you need for modern design. You could look at getting a separate CSS editor.

DON’T use MS Word to design web pages. While you can do very basic page layout there and Save As Web Page, the result is bloated and sluggish and non-standard. It will also mess up web pages you open in it. Dreamweaver, actually has a tool for stripping Word code.

There’s lots of reference material and how-to’s on-line. I have a couple of pocket reference books for HTML and CSS.

Next, the web host…
David

Web Host >
The Domain >

Arts Career

July 1, 2009 at 6:31 pm | In Economoney, Writing | Leave a Comment

One of the challenges that artists face is learning how to develop the business side of their work. How to plan, promote, fund, manage, and make agreements. Locally, we used to be blessed with a great program for teaching those skills but the funding ended.

Recently a Canadian government agency, the Cultural Human Resources Council, produced an updated resource covering these topics and enhancing them with newer paths. Known as The Art of managing Your Career, it comes in 5 sections.

“for self-employed artists and cultural workers in live performing arts; writing and publishing; visual arts and craft; film, television and broadcasting; digital media; music and sound recording, and heritage.“

You can choose those sections most applicable to your needs. The chapters can be downloaded free from the web site. There is also a teachers guide available.

http://www.culturalhrc.ca/amyc/index-e.asp

Peace through Music

June 24, 2009 at 9:57 pm | In Media, Movies, Music | Leave a Comment

Music has a remarkable ability to cut through barriers of language, religion, nationality, and race. It speaks to the heart, to the soul, to the song of our life itself.

Last fall, I was sent a link to a song “Stand By Me” posted on YouTube. Starting with a street musician in California, through the magic of multitrack recording they gradually add musicians from New Orleans, Amsterdam, Toulouse, Rio, Caracas, Congo, and so on. That original low res clip got about 2 million hits. The official high res is approaching 12 million today.

While it’s not the miracle of live concurrent performance from several locations at once, it is a beautiful thing. It blends a vast array of styles and instruments not normally heard together.

It’s a great story too. Starting with the inspiration of hearing one street musician (who opens the above), he sought other musicians to add to the recording. They ended up traveling the world, recording over 100 musicians, often found on the street and through word of mouth. Recordings are often little rehearsed and outdoors.

There’s an interview with Bill Moyers. Awards for an original documentary. The Irish youth choir brought Bono into the act.

Today when I was shopping, I ran into their “Playing for Change” CD/DVD release in a local store. They were playing it to demo the latest sound and video gear. It’s playing in the background as I write this. The web site has some of the clips, plus a few newer ones.

“Talkin’ Bout a Revolution” is about a music revolution. A foundation to give back was formed. Some of the musicians gathered a band and are doing benefit concerts for refugee centers and arts facilities. And it continues to grow…

“The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. No matter whether people come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music has the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race.“

www.playingforchange.com

No Touch Play

June 22, 2009 at 3:16 pm | In Computers, Games, Hardware, Software, Technology | Leave a Comment

A computer that has no keyboard, mouse or controller? That responds to voice and gesture?

It’s coming to market, only its coming to the gaming market first…
Project Natal, an add-on for the XBox 360…

and yeah, technically it is a controller, but it’s nothing you have to hold or touch. And it is real, although footage so far has all been controlled.

How soon it will be available and how well it will perform in the real world remains to be seen.

But this is not just using motion sensing, it’s using 3D modeling of your environment. Some games will even scan your stuff into the game, as the video demonstrates.

“The human tracking algorithms that the teams have developed are well ahead of the state of the art in computer vision in this domain. The sophistication and performance of the algorithms rival or exceed anything that I’ve seen in academic research, never mind a consumer product.”
– Johnny Chung<

Notably, it’s also “fairly insensitive” to lighting conditions.

This will be interesting to watch…
David

Media Serving

June 21, 2009 at 3:24 pm | In Backup, Computers, Design, Hardware, Media, Technology | Leave a Comment

One of the fascinating trends of recent years is how servers are showing up more and more in homes. As media collections, numbers of household computers, file sharing, and backup grow in requirements, consolidation begins to look like a great option. Why not have your entire music library available in your bedroom, living-room, and so on? Why not be able to watch that movie anywhere?

The solution is a media server. This is basically a computer dedicated to storing and sharing data. Set up properly, it also backs it up automatically.

This means that computers around the house are more about applications and outlets or media terminals. They can have specialized uses but also act as access points, kind of like a mini-Internet. Bringing computers out of the office and into living spaces means many are much more styled now, and more compact, like the Mac mini.

If you’re technically inclined, it’s not hard to set up an old computer in the basement as a server. Linux can be had for free and requires less resources. Using a KVM switch or remote access, it doesn’t need a screen, keyboard or mouse.

Microsoft got on the bandwagon with Windows Home Server. This gets good reviews and offers the simplicity of buying it ready to go.

Another product range that’s aligning more with media serving is NAS, Network Attached Storage. Typically used for data and backup, it’s easily adapted to media serving. Recently, I was looking at the excellent QNAP line for a client. The TS-219, for example, is designed to automatically mirror the drive, giving you real time server style data backup. It can be used as a file server, FTP server, web server, backup system (with software), iTunes server, blog server, data replicator, database server, remote surveillance center, even a Torrent server for large file serving. Or several of the above. You can create virtual drives that appear as local on attached computers, even for their boot drive. It has all kind of cool features, like deletion protection, scheduled uptime, and IP blocking. It supports game platforms like PS3 and Xbox, iPods, and on and on.

One of the reasons I was looking at this model – it includes a print server for 3 USB printers. They become available to everyone on the network. Even print to your home office from overseas.

Interestingly, features like virtual drives and data storage mean the accessing computers can become more like the dumb terminals of yore – inexpensive access points to shared content.
David

Paul Hawken’s Commencement

June 8, 2009 at 3:52 pm | In Events, Nature, Science | Leave a Comment

Paul Hawken gave a Commencement Address to the graduating class of the University of Portland.

“When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.”“

The rest of his talk:
http://www.charityfocus.org/blog/view.php?id=2077

Home – the movie

June 8, 2009 at 3:08 pm | In Events, Media, Movies, Nature | 2 Comments

Home is a 2009 documentary by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. The film is entirely composed of aerial shots of various places around Earth. It shows the diversity of life on Earth and how humanity is threatening the ecological balance of the planet. The movie was released simultaneously on June 5th in cinemas all over the world, on DVD and on YouTube.

It’s available online just until June 14 2009 in SD or HD.

http://www.youtube.com/homeproject

93 min , Narrated by Glenn Close
Music by Armand Amar, Budapest Symphony and Shanghai Percussion Ensemble

The Trailer:

There’s also quite a few other clips on the site above. Have not had a chance to watch it yet but wanted to mention it due to time constraints.
David

VW 1L

June 2, 2009 at 3:03 pm | In Design, Technology, Transportation | Leave a Comment

That’s 1L as in 1L/100km milage. That’s 235 mpg. And it’s not a concept car anymore. It’s going into production, if on a small scale. The cost of carbon fibre has been the barrier to the car – first unvieled 6 years ago.

It’s a 2 seater with a single gull-wing door. Video cameras instead of mirrors.

VW 1L